Earnestly polite high schooler, Heidi Schreck, put herself through college by winning Constitutional debates across the US. A quarter-century later, the now-writer reflects on how her younger self, four generations of female relatives, and other marginalized people were shaped by America’s foundational definition of law. While addressing gender and racial biases, this fiercely-urgent partial autobiography peels back the Constitution’s layers of beauty, contradictions, and failures, and optimistically analyzes how the living document could evolve with modern America.